from the companies-own-you dept

Last year, Sony changed its terms of service for accessing the PlayStation Network. Like many other companies, part of the changed terms was a requirement to take disputes to arbitration, rather than court. These clauses are pretty popular for some obvious reasons: the companies almost always win (perhaps because the arbitrator wants to get hired in the future, and implicitly recognizes the big company is likely to call him again -- not the random individual who has a dispute with the big company). On top of that, it's a lot cheaper than litigation. That part is a good thing, but arbitration hearings seem to be so one-sided that they're often not worth it.

Some folks were not at all happy about this and sought to file a class action lawsuit against Sony for the change -- but that lawsuit has been (pretty quickly) rejected by the court, suggesting that the main guy suing failed to show evidence of any harm. In an interesting move, the court found that the fact that you lost access to the network if you didn't agree to the new terms isn't evidence of any harm, but rather a choice. Of course, that seems a bit extreme. It opens up possibilities for companies to more or less corner users into unpleasant situations. Just change the terms and anyone can be excluded.

I'm not a fan of mandatory arbitration clauses or class action lawsuits like this where "harm" is pretty tough to show. In the end, though, it does seem like Sony should be able to choose and change its terms of service. The real issue is that it chose consumer-unfriendly options, and in a better world, less draconian alternatives would spring up to help treat consumers right. It's hard to side with Sony here (or in most situations), but the lawsuit itself does seem like a stretch.

from the can't-let-people-have-rights dept

AC alerts us to a change in the new Sony PlayStation Network terms of service that basically says that you agree not to sue the company. Honestly (and Sony pointed this out in its defense), such clauses are pretty common. It is debatable how enforceable some of these clauses are, but they say that you have to go to arbitration, rather than sue. The terms also bar participating in class action lawsuits, which seems much more questionable. Where Sony gets ridiculous is in claiming that this change "is designed to benefit both the consumer and the company by ensuring that there is adequate time and procedures to resolve disputes." That makes me think of a two syllable word whose first four letters are bull. Come on. At this point, everyone knows that binding arbitration between a company and a consumer wildly favors companies. A study from a few years back found that companies win in arbitration against consumers 95% of the time. Sony knows this. So its move is not about protecting consumers at all, and it's insulting for it to imply that it is.

from the freedomtards,-perhaps dept

Ah, delusion in the CEO suite. Sony CEO Howard Stringer has been struggling to deal with the fact that pretty much everyone* in the tech world now hates his company. He famously called the month or so of downtime for the PlayStation Network, due to Sony's own failure to properly secure its servers, "a hiccup." He's also continued Sony's standard practice of going to war against makers, hackers and innovators, by trying to close off everything and then suing anyone who dares to try to do more with the products they thought they'd bought.

"We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case videogames," Stringer told shareholders at Tuesday's meeting in response to a question about the background to the incident.

Of course, that's an interesting version of revisionist history. There are all sorts of theories as to why Sony got hacked, with Occam and his trusty Razor suggesting the simplest answer: because Sony had crazy weak security that would allow malicious hackers to make off with useful information with which they could profit. But even if we grant Stringer's unsupported assertion was true, what set many people off (though, not necessarily these hackers) was the fact that Sony sued George Hotz for doing nothing more than helping to re-enable a feature that Sony had marketed as part of the PS3... and then had retroactively disabled. That's not "protecting Sony's IP." That's breaking a product and false advertising... and then suing people for trying to help make your products more valuable.

“These are our corporate assets,” Stringer told the meeting, “..and there are those that don’t want us to protect them, they want everything to be free.”

Seriously, Howard? This has absolutely nothing to do with people wanting stuff for free. People are pissed because you're suing people who are trying to improve your products -- the ones they actually paid for (yes, with real money). If anything, they want "free" as in speech, not free as in beer. They're looking for the freedom to tinker and to expand and to build.

And you're giving them the opposite.

And let's can the crap in which you pretend that Sony has to "protect" its intellectual property in this manner. It doesn't. You can treat customers right, even without being overprotective. Why, just look at Samsung, one of your biggest competitors. When it came out with a new device, rather than freaking out about people jailbreaking it, it sent free devices to some of the top modders, and asked them to mod and hack them faster...

That's called treating your community right, not treating them as criminals. It's not because people want everything to be free. People are quite often happy to pay for something of scarce value to them. Where they get upset is when you make that product less valuable by locking it down in anti-consumer ways.

So, no, you weren't hacked by freetards. You were hacked because you had dreadful security, and everyone's pissed not because they want stuff for free, but because you treat them like crap.

* Yes, slight exaggeration. But no more than calling over a month downtime on a popular gaming platform a "hiccup."

from the hiccup dept

So, it took a few weeks for Sony to get everything in order after its er... hiccup in exposing the details of everyone on the PlayStation Network. And, now it appears that the Japanese government's worries that Sony hadn't really fixed the problem or made its system secure appear to be coming true. There are reports this morning that the new password reset system has been exploited, such that you could change anyone's password if you have their email and date of birth. You know where you could have gotten that info? From the original hacked data. Right. *Hic*

from the sony-shouldn't-be-left-in-charge-of-your-metaphors-much-less-your-personal-i dept

As we've all seen over the last thirty days or so, Sony has handled their month-long data breach/pwnage with all the grace and humility that one expects from an out-of-touch megacorporation. Between dismissing the breach as "harmless" and fingering the ever-popular "Anonymous" for all the trouble, Sony has managed to stay at least one step behind their attackers the whole way. To add insult to injurious class action lawsuit, it emerged from the 30-day hackout bruised, bleeding and completely unable to go back online in its own country.

CEO Howard Stringer apparently has come to the conclusion that there's still plenty of room for more foot in Sony's mouth, dismissing the longest outage by any console maker as merely a "hiccup in the road to a network future."

Now, I don't want to presume to speak for everybody, but generally when I have the hiccups (inside or outside of the road), it tends to leave the nearest 77 million people unaffected. Sure, I may get some random advice (drink a glass of water/hold your breath/salt your passwords), but otherwise life goes on and I'm the only one bothered by it. Plus, these hiccup attacks never run more than 10-12 days at the most and only rarely do I lay the blame at the feet of unrelated hacking entities.

Thank you, Howard, for clearing that up. I'll be sure to dismiss any unknown charges to my credit cards as mere "hiccups in the road to financial instability" and when my linked email account becomes a spam-spewing zombie, I'll just hold my breath until it all goes away.

from the not-safe-for-home dept

There have been a bunch of stories about how Sony is finally bringing its PlayStation Network back online (though, the funniest headline I've seen is the BBC's which claims that Sony is "relaunching" the PSN, as if it's a marketing thing...). However, it appears that the gradual comeback is not coming to Japan just yet, as the government is not yet comfortable that Sony can really protect its users:

"We met with Sony on May 6 and 13, and basically we want two things from them," Kazushige Nobutani, director of the Media and Content Industry department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told Dow Jones Newswires.

He listed two areas where it requires further explanation before approval will be given following the incidents regarding its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment videogame services.

"The first is preventative measures. As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference," he said, adding that he could not provide details on the outstanding issues for security reasons.

The second was in how Sony hoped to regain consumer confidence over personal data such as credit card information.

"There were similar cases in the past that were caused by other firms, and we are asking Sony whether their measures are good enough when compared to countermeasures taken in the past," he said.